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It was reported on the Anime News Network that Funimation no longer has the rights to Detective Conan and KenIchi the Mightiest Disciple.
The Funimation episodes of the show were removed from Crunchyroll and Funimation's own streaming services.
Since the removal of the funimation episodes Crunchyroll only has the episodes 754 and later.

This could be a "mixed blessing" because somebody else could now do the show if they acquire the rights, but with such a large backlog of episodes will anyone be willing to do that?

Full story here:
Funimation's Case Closed, KenIchi the Mightiest Disciple Licenses Expire

Crunchy won't be able to dub episodes from now?

Mouti wrote:Crunchy won't be able to dub episodes from now?

Crunchyroll will continue to sub new episodes.

Funimation is a company that did a short-lived English dub of Detective Conan, known as "Case Closed".
Since Funimation owned the license, nobody else was allowed to continue dubbing Conan after they stopped (which was shortly before Haibara's introduction). But now that option is open.

One thing's for certain: if somebody does take to dubbing them all, they're not going to be aired on TV one episode at a time, but rather appear on some kind of streaming service. I could see maybe Netflix doing this, in which case we could probably expect a high-quality dub.

I'm actually 99% certain it is not getting dubbed again. Maybe ever.

There's really no point, and there's not enough of an audience for specifically a dub by this point. MAYBE we'll get lucky and the rest of the series will be subbed. Because as we all know, the gap between 123 and the mid-700s has never been translated in English ever. :V

kkslider5552000 wrote:I'm actually 99% certain it is not getting dubbed again. Maybe ever.

There's really no point, and there's not enough of an audience for specifically a dub by this point. MAYBE we'll get lucky and the rest of the series will be subbed. Because as we all know, the gap between 123 and the mid-700s has never been translated in English ever. :V

Dunno about that. I'm pretty sure the absolutely terrible Funimation dub was a big part of why it never caught on in America. If they actually did a good job this time around, and did enough to advertise it, I think they might have a decent chance.
But yeah, it seems more likely that they'd just go with subbing the whole series.

(Edit: It should be noted also that 2004 was kind of a different time as far as animation in America was concerned. Aside from the Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama, South Park and the likes, cartoons were still widely considered an entertainment medium geared towards children. A great deal has been accomplished since then towards breaking this stigma.)

Swagnarok wrote: Dunno about that. I'm pretty sure the absolutely terrible Funimation dub was a big part of why it never caught on in America. If they actually did a good job this time around, and did enough to advertise it, I think they might have a decent chance.

A big part of the issue is that they aired it on adult swim despite it being a kids show. It was hard to catch for a 9-year-old.

Yeah, but it wasn't possible otherwise, because of the U.S. Standard and Practises for Kids shows.

And I also agree that the dub was really appalling. I remember when I watched the first dub episode with disgust. Dub Names, Unnecessary Jokes/OOCing ("Mr No Head".)

Heard that it got a bit better later, but imo they screwed up from the start.

One reason, whjy Conan is still a big thing in Germany is because the Dub was really good. It had some adaption hick ups in the last season, that been dubbed, but mostly it made a fantastic job.

S.Vineyard wrote:Yeah, but it wasn't possible otherwise, because of the U.S. Standard and Practises for Kids shows.

Which is why it's done for regardless of dub quality. Plenty of successful anime had much worse dubs. They aired it at 1 am to prevent the proper age group from watching it.

One reason, whjy Conan is still a big thing in Germany is because the Dub was really good.

The German dub was also edited down and aired among other children's anime programming.

I have no idea how Detective Conan even could've taken off in North America. Even Phoenix Wright, despite catching on far better, is still niche despite every god damn nerd like me praising it to death for over a decade. And even then, Detective Conan is too realistic and slow to grab most people the same way.

Even in terms of anime fandom I feel like its time has passed over here. No one even wants long runners anymore. I always hesitate to recommend it since either you spend an absolute absurd amount of time on one anime (even ignoring AOs). I can't even recommend the manga because of huge gaps in the middle that weren't translated well, and I don't exactly want to recommend buying the English manga volumes that would probably cost you more combined than an Xbox One X by this point.

Even if you pretend Conan is exactly as good as it was 15 years ago (because quality does not matter much one way or the other), it's a complete disaster to try and build an English speaking audience for it. The only way I could ever see it happening would be if TMS or someone put a lot of time and effort and money towards doing so and if they ignored the vast majority of AOs when releasing/re-releasing it over here.

kkslider5552000 wrote:I have no idea how Detective Conan even could've taken off in North America. Even Phoenix Wright, despite catching on far better, is still niche despite every god damn nerd like me praising it to death for over a decade. And even then, Detective Conan is too realistic and slow to grab most people the same way.

Even in terms of anime fandom I feel like its time has passed over here. No one even wants long runners anymore. I always hesitate to recommend it since either you spend an absolute absurd amount of time on one anime (even ignoring AOs). I can't even recommend the manga because of huge gaps in the middle that weren't translated well, and I don't exactly want to recommend buying the English manga volumes that would probably cost you more combined than an Xbox One X by this point.

Even if you pretend Conan is exactly as good as it was 15 years ago (because quality does not matter much one way or the other), it's a complete disaster to try and build an English speaking audience for it. The only way I could ever see it happening would be if TMS or someone put a lot of time and effort and money towards doing so and if they ignored the vast majority of AOs when releasing/re-releasing it over here.

Well, Conan's done now, but like ProfParanoia has said, it certainly could have taken off in North America had American censorship rules had been different. Conan's ultimately a kid's show but with way too much violence/blood for American kids. So instead of getting an after school timeslot on Toonami/the Zone like it's supposed to, it got like a midnight Adult Swim/Bionix timeslot, which is a terrible fit for Conan, since the late teens watching Adult Swim aren't watching a bunch of 7 year olds playing around.

I actually think Conan could have done pretty well with an after school timeslot, at least on par with its popularity in Europe. Kid/teen's detective series like Scooby Doo/Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys etc have traditionally been popular in North America, so it's not like North American kids aren't interested in detective fiction.

Well, how's it doing on CR?

Probably don't think we're at a point that it could be marketed/presented towards kids (even the older portion), but I do think that if not for it coming over in 2004 and failing ultimately, it could have worked around maybe in the 10-11 timeslot with material like King of the Hill where it's not kid friendly by country standards, but not as intense as the midnight material.